PechaKucha Presentation

How we can find our own role in the European “Refugee Crisis"

With the onset of a ‘Refugee crisis’ in Europe we are confronted with a narrative that has become too emotional and polarised to understand its core message: refugees are people like you and me.

We can hardly imagine how much struggle it must be to leave one's own country and everything that is close to one's heart behind. But it doesn’t take much for us to open our arms and make someone feel welcome, says Aurelia Streit.

She believes that we can change the current narrative towards refugees in Europe by establishing local platforms for intercultural exchange.

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The idea behind CampusEurope originated from a local student TV in Maastricht (BreakingMaas). During the process of making BreakingMaas a sustainable project, the group of students started to discover other Student TVs around the Netherlands. It was with this discovery that they had the idea to try and create a network of student TVs that would produce a European student television show.

One of the questions they asked themselves is: why do we feel the need for a European student television show? They could have pursued media projects through their local student TV, which would have allowed them to produce local reports in better quality and with less work.

However in a more connected Europe where one sees governments in dispute with each other, and where news is limited to national perspectives, the students felt the urge to produce content which would allow them to understand multiple perspectives on a European issue.

This is where the project is of great significance; CampusEurope give students from all over Europe a stage to voice their opinions on a political, social and economic subject, which in the end affects all Europeans, no matter how far they live from each other. That’s why they believe that CampusEurope provides the essential platform to exchange opinions and find a common ground in an interconnected world.

SpeakerDenys Vasyliev, leader of BarabanZA (a musical club) and guide in bureau of author's excursions, presents on how to find your own rhytm with ethnic drums. His main idea – everything in a Universe has its own rhythm. With music you can find your own and change your life for good.

Mueid Al Raee is interested in the connection of philosophy and religion. He talks about the influences that shaped Spinoza’s work on philosophy, religion, and understanding the nature of God.

Mueid presents Averroes as an important character in the story of secularism. Averroes is often referred to as the father of European Secularism. Mueid argues that religion played an important role in the formulation of the philosophy of secularism as we know it today in Europe.

His message is that we should challenge the ideas that consider secularism and religion as opposites.

As a consultant, Duc Hoang often asks a lot of questions to understand more about his clients’ situation and then he finds the answers from their own responses. At the age of 25, he experienced a quarter-life crisis (the period of life ranging from twenties to thirties). He felt stressful, doubtful about his life and his future. Then, a monk asked him to ask himself a lot of questions and luckily this helped him survive his personal crisis.

In 2017, Europe will be 25 years old, the same age when Duc had his quarter-life crisis, and it is also going through a crisis. Therefore, he would like to invite the PechaKucha audience to try and act like a consultant, and ask all European citizens the same question: What is the meaning of that number?

Yannic Bellino shares how he came to dream of a post-national future for Europe. In the period between his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees, he spent some time in Berlin working for the European Democracy Lab where he learnt that maybe the current set-up of the EU is obsolete. He now believes that a new narrative and a new utopia are needed in these times of re-emerging nationalism.

We have all seen the images of migrants arriving in Europe, but have you met one? Haroon Rezaie and his family took the risk and journeyed to the Netherlands. Now he wants to share his experience in order to give people a vision about the life of refugees and why they became a refugee. This could be either that they came by favour or they were compelled by the living circumstances to leave everything behind and start life again in a new place. This is the ultimate story to inspire perseverance and determination in any situation.

"How can we make our endeavors clear and approachable enough that we can actually contribute to the public debate at a very high level?"

In Rethinking Resettlement from PechaKucha Buffalo Vol. 18, Assistant Professor of Architecture at the University at Buffalo, Erkin Özay, reviews some of the social and design issues involved in rehousing and supporting Buffalo, New York's new Americans. Özay's Spring 2016 UB graduate studio explored the potential for temporary and long-term housing for newly arrived refugees and immigrants, as well as the role of supporting institutions, community assets, and reimagining the existing housing stock. Özay's project investigates "compassionate urbanism." He is interested in how groups of limited means--new and existing residents--support each other through careful intersections.